


Drive By

by LadyBaltimore



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Caper Fic, Car Chases, Cults, Driving, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Multi, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Romantic Comedy, Short, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-04-06 06:28:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19057093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBaltimore/pseuds/LadyBaltimore
Summary: A hapless, thirtysomething werewolf is about to find out that the road to true love never runs smooth. Literally.





	1. Strange Fellows

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a requested fic. Cross-posted to HPFF.

When Remus John Lupin was sixteen, he wrote a love poem, the first and only one he would ever write. 

It went something like this:

 _Roses are red  
Violets are blue.  
By the way I’m a werewolf  
Hope that doesn’t bother you._  
  
Remus never had any illusions of becoming the voice of his generation or anything like that, but he was a good student who got ‘Outstandings’ on essays about complicated things like Elemental Transfiguration and Golpalott’s Third Law. Writing a little ditty to a girl he liked should be a breeze, right? 

Wrong. He was so very wrong.

He had spent two hours furiously scribbling, crossing out, and scribbling again until side of his writing hand was smudged with ink—and all he had to show for it were four shoddy lines of nursery-rhyme level verse that didn’t even mention the word ‘love’. 

He groaned and crumpled up the poem, tossing it to the floor which was already littered with dozens of earlier drafts. In the end, he didn’t send anything to the girl. Years later, she got married and had three kids with someone else.

Ever since he hit puberty, Remus struggled with certain four-letter words beginning with the letter L.

Once, during Double Potions his fourth year, he tried to say ‘I like you’ to a girl who happened to be his lab partner at the time—Amy Cadwallader was her name, she was in Hufflepuff. But as soon as his tongue began to form the ‘L,’ it hitched against the roof his mouth and froze. Amy stared at him for a few uncomfortable seconds while he made an extended ‘L’ noise. In his panic, he ended up saying, “Amy, I wanted to let you know that I l…l…l…lost my bezoar, have you seen it?” She frowned and looked pointedly at the large bezoar sitting on the table in front of him.

‘Endearingly awkward’ was the term Lily used to describe him when they were teenagers. “Girls like that,” she would say. “It’s charming in a non-threatening kind of way. Like a puppy.”

 _Yeah, right: a puppy that turns into a flesh-eating man-beast every full moon. Thanks, Lily_. But Remus was a timid, mousy boy, and Lily a popular, red-headed girl, so he trusted her opinion.

The years passed and Lily’s theory had yet to be proven true. Remus was now at a point in his life where his awkwardness could hardly be thought of as endearing. He was a thirty-five-year-old, prematurely graying werewolf and the thought of saying ‘I like you’ to a woman still terrified him. ‘I love you’ was simply out of the question.

  


### London, 1995

  
It was meant to be a routine drive-by, but Remus saw it as an opportunity to change the course of his romantic life forever.

Per Moody’s orders the day before, they were to set off in pairs, patrolling the streets of London for signs of Death Eaters. “It doesn’t matter if you’re out on foot, bike, broom, car, hippogriff—what matters is that you don’t get caught,” Mad Eye growled at the assembled Order members during their last debrief. “As I’ve said before: your most powerful weapon isn’t some spell or fancy wand work. No, the difference between life and death out there on those streets comes down to two words. Which are—?” he motioned for the others to finish the sentence.

“Constant Vigilance,” they mumbled in lazy unison.

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Moody barked.

“CONSTANT VIGILANCE,” they groaned louder.

He then paired them off and assigned shifts. “Lupin, Tonks: tomorrow I want you to do a ground survey north of the neighborhood. Mind this area around the park,” he circled it on the map. “There’s been police reports of some ‘peculiar lookin’ folk walking about—people out in robes in broad daylight. And I want you two to stay street-level for this one—no brooms.” His eye whirred around its socket as he spoke.

Tonks winked at Remus from across the table. “Don’t worry, Mad-Eye. Moony and I got this.”

Remus took his role with the Order very seriously, but at that moment his heart soared at having a reason to be alone with her away from Grimmauld Place. There would be no Mad-Eye Moody watching their every move. No stir-crazy Sirius bothering him every five minutes. Just him and Tonks and a whole Sunday afternoon full of possibilities.

“Fancy taking a walk tomorrow?” he asked her, perhaps a little too eagerly.

Tonks balked at the suggestion. “That neighborhood’s huge. There’s no way we’ll be able to cover that much ground on foot in one afternoon.”

“Have you got a better idea?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” she said, her dark eyes twinkling.

The next day, he sat on the stoop of Grimmauld Place, waiting for her to arrive. 

 Tonks finally pulled up in a beat-up looking Vauxhall Astra. She bleated the horn happily.

“Wotcher, Moony!” she greeted him from the driver’s seat as he approached the vehicle. She had one arm out the window and a pair of bold sunglasses on. Yesterday her hair was bubblegum pink, today it was platinum blonde.

He leaned in through passenger window, inspecting the tattered interior. “I thought you were going to reserve one of the Ministry cars.” 

“Nah. Mad Eye said it would be too obvious. So Dung hooked me up with this old gal.” She patted the steering wheel. “Ain’t she a beaut? We’ll blend right in with the muggles.” 

He wouldn’t have been surprised if Dung had picked her out of a junkyard; she was in bad need of a paint job, her exhaust sputtered, and the hubcaps were nearly rusted through. Yet the young, sprightly witch behind the wheel revved the engine as though she were a race car.

“My mother always warned me about getting into cars with strange women,” he quipped.

Tonks grinned. “Hop in, momma’s boy. We haven’t got all day.”

She was right about that. Mad-Eye wanted them to report back before nightfall. He theorized that with the daytime traffic, they were less likely to be singled out driving around suspected Death Eater hotbeds. “It’s all about getting close to the nest without waking the dragon,” Moody growled at them earlier that morning. “Keep a close eye on your surroundings and each other. Remember: CONSTANT VIGILANCE!”

‘Constant vigilance’ did not apply to Tonks’s driving, however. She weaved haphazardly through midtown traffic, occasionally taking her hands off the wheel to mime something to Remus as she talked.

“When did you learn to drive?” he asked, hoping he sounded lighthearted and not terrified after they screeched around a particularly sharp turn.

“Dad taught me the summer I turned seventeen,” she said brightly as she shifted gear. “I remember it like it was yesterday: I had come home all upset because I just failed my Apparition test and he sat me down and said, ‘Dora, my parents were muggles and they didn’t have wands, or portkeys, or fancy brooms to help them get around. All they had was The Beast’—that’s what grandad used to call their old station wagon. Anyway, Dad got the car after grandad passed and he told me that I would do my muggle forefathers proud or something if I learned how to drive it. Meanwhile, my mum—bless her pureblood heart—was all like, ‘Edward Tonks. There is no way our daughter is getting into that metal deathtrap.’ But she eventually gave in and Dad and I had a blast cruising around in The Beast. We had the windows down and the radio on and everything. Best summer ever,” she sighed. “Then I passed the Apparition test on the second go and haven’t touched a car since. Well, until today.”

He looked at her incredulously. “That means you haven’t driven in like—what—ten years?”

“Er, more like…five?” She let out an embarrassed laugh. “Don’t worry: as the muggles say, it’s just like riding a bike. Once you learn how to do it, you never forget. Although, I haven’t actually ridden a bike since that summer either, so I’m not sure if I still know how…”

 She prattled on cheerfully while Remus only half-listened. He was still processing the fact he had been wrong about her age. He knew that she was younger, but assumed she was at the very least twenty-five. His thirty-five years now felt ancient compared to her mere twenty-two.

He often wondered if she thought he was old. She once caught him fretting in the mirror over the silver threads starting to peak through his brown hair, and since then had taken to randomly morphing into a white-haired old lady, pointing to her head and asking him,“Young man, do you see any greys?”

A terrible thought occurred to him: what if all this time, he had been reading her signals all wrong? What if she didn’t see him as her partner on a romantic surveillance mission, but as a stand-in for her father: the jovial middle-aged wizard who used to give her driving lessons.

He sank into his seat, feeling like he swallowed a rock.

Sensing his discomfort, Tonks fiddled around with the radio for some distraction. “Damned thing,” she muttered, blindly mashing buttons and twisting knobs. “This would be so much easier with a wand—Oops!”

She had drifted into the opposite lane while trying to fish her wand out of her pocket, earning a few angry honks as she swerved back to their side.

“Get off the road, ya cunt!” yelled a red-faced driver in a van.

“Up yours, arsehole!” Tonks screamed out the window. Remus watched in awe as she pulled her head back in. “My, I’ve forgotten how lovely people are when they drive,” she chuckled.

He had a disturbingly paternal urge to tell her to stop provoking the muggles and mind the road, but saying so would only make him feel even more like her old man, so he kept his mouth shut.

 _Let her be. For Merlin's sake, she’s a grown woman and fully-fledged auror_ , he thought to himself. _I’m not her father or her driving instructor._

_Hell, I never even learned how to drive in the first place._

Although the skill wouldn’t have been of much use to him as an adult wizard, he secretly regretted not knowing how to drive. His mother would have taught him, but she was already too frail by the time he was old enough. 

Before she got sick, Hope Lupin loved being behind the wheel. She had a convertible many years ago and during the summer she would take her husband and son on road trips along the coast. They put the top down, letting the sun tan their faces and the salty air whip through their hair. “See what you’re missing out on when you just Apparate everywhere?” she yelled cheerfully at her husband over the wind. “It’s not about the destination, but the journey!” From the passenger side, Lyall smiled and gave his muggle wife a thumbs up, all the while gripping the edge of his seat as though it kept him from flying out of the vehicle.

Young Remus rode in the backseat, holding out his thin arms to catch the wind. He admired how deftly his mother would steer them along the winding the roads, her honey-blonde curls spilling out of the gauzy scarf she wore to contain them. She would sometimes turn her head slightly to check on her son and remind him gently, “put your seatbelt on, sweetheart.”

Still thinking about his mother, adult Remus tugged the nylon belt by its dangling metal clasp and buckled himself in with a satisfying click.

Tonks looked over at him and scowled. “Really?” 

  
\---

   
An hour of driving around the park yielded no signs of robed figures or Dark Marks. It was getting hot and the AC was broken, so they decided to pull over under the shade of a large oak tree to cool down. They finally got the radio to work, and The Rolling Stones hummed out of the car’s tinny speakers while Tonks reclined in the driver’s seat, her hands folded behind her head and her Doc Martens up on the dashboard, tapping along to the music.

Remus, meanwhile, had his elbows propped up on the sill of the passenger-side window, gazing out at the park through a pair of Omnioculars, a leftover from last year’s Quidditch World Cup, under the pretense of looking for signs of suspicious activity. But really he was just fiddling around with them to have something to distract himself from the young woman sprawled out next to him, with her lean legs stretched out on the dash and a pale strip of bare midriff peeking out above her denim shorts.

He zoomed in on random parkgoers going about their leisure—speeding them up, slowing them down, pausing them in mid-motion. He froze a skateboarder in midair as he cleared a trash can, sped up a tiny old lady doing Tai-Chi, replayed a heavy businessman dropping a burrito again and again. He was watching a woman jog in slow motion when Tonks cleared her throat to get his attention.

“Ahem. You know I can replay everything you’ve looked at through those, right?”

He put down the Omnioculars and turned towards her. Her indignant tone was undermined by the playful—dare he imagine, flirtatious—glint in her eyes.

“Good. You can re-watch it and make sure I didn’t miss anything,” he said casually, handing her back the device.

She snorted. “Like I’m going to sift through a half hour of fat men dropping burritos and nearly-naked joggers.” 

“You told me were going to ‘close your eyes for a bit.' How is it you were watching me this whole time?”

 “Two words: Constant. Fucking. Vigilance.” 

He laughed. “I believe that’s three…”  

There were many things that attracted him to Tonks, but chief among them was how inexplicably sexy she sounded when she swore—which was often.

“She takes after me, alright,” Sirius had told him after meeting her for the first time since his escape from prison. “The last time I’d seen Dora she was just an innocent purple-haired little thing. Now she’s a foul-mouthed, arse-kicking reprobate just like her Uncle Sirius.”

“But she’s technically your cousin, right?” Remus asked him. “Thinking of her as your niece just makes her sound so…young…”

“Why should that matter to you, unless…” Sirius grinned slyly. “You fancy her, mate?” 

“Don’t be stupid,” he hissed, though he could feel his ears turn red.

Remus couldn’t quite get a read on what his friend’s current opinions were regarding his feelings for Dora. They hadn’t discussed it since. But a few weeks ago, as they were eating breakfast at Grimmauld Place one morning, Sirius said to him out of the blue: “Imagine if you and Tonks had kids. You’d have all these wee technicolor werewolves running around.” He took a thoughtful bite of his cornflakes. “That’d be bloody brilliant.” 

As uncomfortable as he was with Sirius mentally breeding him with his cousin, he had to admit that the same absurd thought had also crossed his mind. She was the first metamorphagus he ever met, and he her first werewolf. Such a pairing probably never existed before.

Maybe he was putting the cart before the horse by imagining their future children, but his mind had been racing in all sorts of wild directions since they began working together for the Order last summer. That was when he told her about his Lycanthropy. Whereas most people would have recoiled, she had merely shrugged and said, “Well, then. Aren’t we just a match made in freak heaven.” 

Tonks reached over from the driver’s seat of the Astra and waved her hand in front of Remus’s face. “Earth to Moony. Is anyone home?”

He shook his head, freeing it from memories of last summer. “Sorry. Zoned out for a moment.”

“No kidding. What’s on your mind?” 

“Nothing,” he said automatically.

 _Tell her, you fool,_ his inner voice coaxed _. Who knows when you’ll have another opportunity to be alone with her like this._

“Actually, Dora, there is something that’s been on my mind,” he blurted. 

She turned down the radio and looked up at him eagerly. “Spill it, Moony. I’m all ears.” 

He sighed. _Here goes nothing_. 

“Well, I’ve been wanting to tell you this pretty much since the day we met. It’s hard to explain, but I just feel like we have this connection. Believe me,” he laughed nervously, “I know how cliché that sounds, but honestly, I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt this way…Like I’ve finally met someone who understands me. And since we’ve been going on missions together, you’ve just been so…er…”

He trailed off because he realized she was no longer listening to him. Her eyes were instead fixated on something over his shoulder. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, turning his head to see what she was gazing at.

“Don’t turn around now!” she hissed. “Keep looking at me, like we’re talking.”

He obeyed and watched her while she continued to glare ominously out at the park.

“You’re starting to freak me out, Tonks.”

“Hush.” 

After a minute passed, she grabbed the Omnioculars out of his hand and leaned across his lap to get a better look. The sudden proximity of her head to his made his pulse quicken almost as much as whatever was going on outside.

“I think we’ve found our ‘peculiar’ fellow,” she told him. “Over there.”

He peered out the window to where she indicated. In the park, about 50 yards away, a tall figure dressed in coarse brown robes was walking quickly down a path that ran parallel to their street. It could have been a man, but it was hard to tell when all he could see was his hooded profile. The figure continued on his determined pace until he reached the park entrance, turned onto the street up ahead, and disappeared from view. 

“You reckon he’s a Deathie?” Tonks asked.

“Could be. Though it seems rather odd for a Death Eater to be seen strolling about the park in broad daylight.”

“I suppose he could just be some weirdo; goodness knows this park’s got more than its fair share of those. Either way, we should tail him in case he’s going to meet his mates,” she said as she started the engine again. Despite their potentially grave predicament, she sounded oddly giddy with excitement.

“Why are you so eager? I thought you did this for a living,” he teased.

“But never from a car. It’s strangely exhilarating. I feel like one of those muggle police who solve murders…what are they called again?” 

“Detectives?”

“Yeah, like a _detective_.” She stepped on the gas and peeled away from the curb. 

They turned a hard left at the intersection where the figure had disappeared. The new street they were on had no trees and was lined with much older looking buildings.  

“Sorry if I scared you earlier, by the way,” Tonks said suddenly. “He was facing us and I thought we would be too obvious if we both looked.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Remus muttered. “I was just worried you’d snapped or something.”

“Right,” she smirked. 

“There he is—up ahead.” He pointed out the shady figure striding up the sidewalk.

As they drove by, the man kept walking with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets. The hood shielded his face from view, but as Remus glanced at him through his open window, he was hit with a heady, awfully familiar sensation that made the hair on the back of his neck stand.  _It can't be him_ , he tried to reason to himself, but a primal instinct told him otherwise: _It s him. It's definitely him._

The man seemed to sense something, too. He stopped in his tracks and peered up from beneath his hood as they passed. Through the wing mirror, Remus caught a glimpse of his face. His features were long and shadowy—apart from his eyes, which gleamed yellow.

“What is it? Did you see his face?” she inquired.

“Pull over up there,” he said tersely.

They parked a little ways up the street and tracked the hooded man’s movements in the review mirror. Rather than continuing up their way, however, he abruptly turned and vanished down a narrow alleyway between two derelict buildings.

“I've got a bad feeling about this guy. We should probably go see what he's up to,” she said. 

Remus was already unbuckling himself. “I'll go. You wait here with the car. One of us needs to report back to headquarters in case something happens."

“Not so fast, Seatbelt," she retorted. " _I’ll_ scope him out, while _you_ wait here.” 

 "No, I insist on going on my own. He could be dangerous."

“Don’t be gallant. I’m the fully qualified auror here, remember?”

“And I’m the…former Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher here,” he countered lamely. 

“Oh, _forgive me_ , Professor Lupin.”

“I admit that sounded better in my head. But at any rate: you’re the driver. Therefore you should stay with the car."  
Before she could protest further, he swiftly got out of the Astra and shut the door behind him.

 Tonks looked furious. “Are you mad?” 

He poked his head back in. “I won’t be long. Keep the engine running.” He left her with what he hoped was an assuring grin, but her reaction said otherwise. As he sprinted away from the car, he could hear her hiss at him through the open window: "Moony...Remus...get your arse back here!"

 His heart raced as he approached the alleyway. By the entrance, an old tramp was sitting against a dumpster.

 "Spare any change, fella?" the muggle growled.

 "Sorry," Remus muttered before walking quickly past him. The narrow, cobblestone side street was flanked by two formerly imposing brick buildings-perhaps factories in their heyday-that have since fallen into neglect. He treaded down the dark alley until he found himself standing in front of brick wall: a dead end. The man was no where to be found.  There was no door or window on either side for him to have crawled through.

  _Must have apparated_ , Remus mused. Then another idea struck him. _Unless_...

 On a hunch, he approached the wall and tapped it with his wand. Exactly eight times in a circle.

 The bricks began to shift and part before him like a biblical sea. He glanced behind him in fear that the panhandling muggle could hear the not inconspicuous sound of brick grating against brick, but the tramp had already dozed off against his dumpster.

 The wall reogranized itself until it formed an arched entrance way of about his height, at the end of which was a rounded wooden door. He took a deep breath as he gripped the handle and pushed it open.

 Before him was a large, cavernous room with earthen walls, dimly illuminated by a small hearth burning in the far corner. Hunched over the fire was the robed man. With his back to him, he greeted Remus with a surprisingly bright, mellow voice.

 “Remus John. I thought I caught your scent.”

“And I yours, Barric,” he responded gravely, his hand tightening around his wand.

The man got up from the fire and turned to face him. As he stepped into the dusty strip of light filtering down from the boarded ceiling, Remus could see his face in full. His transition was more advanced than when he had seen him last, and although the full moon was still weeks away, his features resembled more wolf than man. Especially his eyes, which gleamed a golden yellow even in the semi-darkness.

 It was then he noticed movement in the shadowy corners of the room, and more pairs of inhumanly bright eyes: most were yellow like Barric's, others were blue, green, and at least one red.

 “So you've found us," Barric said pleasantly. "I must say, it’s good to see you again, Brother Lupin.”

 


	2. The Lupus Dei

### One Year Ago: Berlin, 1994

Remus Lupin did not find the Lupus Dei. The Lupus Dei found him. Specifically, they found him one night in late July, getting sloshed at a grungy dance hall below the streets of Kreuzberg.

After he was forced to resign from his teaching position at Hogwarts, he decided to escape to the continent for a while, hoping to do some quiet soul searching in European cities where no one knew his name. Instead, he found loud underground discotheques in reunified Berlin: absorbed in a sweaty mass of bodies while the Eurythmics thumped overhead, he discovered that it was possible to be anonymous without being alone.

The night he met Barric—or rather, when Barric caught up to him—he was drowning himself in neon lights and pounding bass and cheap vodka while mohawked Berliners thrashed about, some spinning themselves headfirst on dancefloor. He felt ridiculously out of place there, but then again, he felt ridiculously out of place everywhere.

Four shots of Stoli in he heard someone yell at him in English over the din: “Say, what’s a decent chap like you doing alone at a place like this?”

Remus turned to see a man around his age standing next to him, grinning. He was tall, slim, and comely, wearing a light sports coat and fitted slacks that contrasted sharply with the clubgoers in their baggy jeans, oversized t-shirts, and leather chokers.

“I’m not alone…I’m waiting for someone,” Remus shouted back. This was of course a lie. He couldn’t tell if the man was trying to make a pass or merely happy to find a fellow countryman.

“You look familiar. Didn’t we overlap at Hogwarts?” the Brit asked.

Remus cocked his head in surprise. Judging from his tweedy outfit and posh accent, he had assumed the dapper stranger was of the sort that watched polo matches—not quidditch matches.

“Not sure. What house were you?”

“Ravenclaw. Graduated ’75.”

“Ah. Gryffindor. ’78.”

“Yes, I knew it! That was you and your friends I caught brewing potions in the second-floor girls’ loo. You lot were fourth years then, I think.”

“Wait a minute, you were the prefect who walked in on us?”

“The very same. I was on patrol that evening and happened to be passing by when I heard the explosion.”

A memory resurfaced, clear as day: Remus and his mates had been trying to brew an animagus potion in the abandoned girls’ lavatory, but James put too much of something and cauldron erupted with a soggy bang, spewing the solution everywhere. As they stared at each other, soaked in their own failed experiment, a prim-looking seventh year boy stuck his head into the bathroom, covering his eyes with one hand. “Hello?” he said stiffly. “Is everything alright in there, Miss? I can fetch the matron if you need assistance—just say the word.”

It was surreal to see that uptight Ravenclaw so many years later on a blacklit dancefloor in Berlin.

“We were rather stupid back then. It was nice of you to let us off with just a warning.”

The former prefect smiled. “It wouldn’t be Hogwarts if you didn’t get away with a little mischief sometimes. Isn’t that right, er—forgive me, what’s your name again?”

“John,” Remus replied. “John Howell.”

By that point, he had grown accustomed to using an alias—his middle name and his mother’s maiden name—to avoid word getting back to England that the disgraced Professor Lupin was now moshing his way through Europe.

“Pleased to meet you again, John. Barric Johnston-Hughes, at your service,” the man stuck out his hand. Remus shook it.

“What brings you to Berlin, Barric?”

“Business, I’m afraid.” He fished a business card out of his back pocket and handed it to Remus.

“‘Belby Remedies, Ltd. International Sales Consultant,’” he read off the card. “You’re a potion pusher.”

Barric chuckled. “The wizard up top prefers I go by ‘consultant’, but yes, that is essentially what I do: I go abroad and get healers and apothecarists to stock Belby products.”

“What are you selling?”

“Aconite. Better known as Wolfsbane.”

Remus froze. In his pocket was a vial of that bitter potion, the very last of the supply Severus Snape made for him before he was sacked. With careful rationing, he had enough to last him until the coming full moon, but he was already dreading the next month, when he would once again undergo a full transformation into a senseless savage. He planned to be deep in some Bavarian forest by then, far away from anyone that could be a potential victim of his beastly rage.

Barric continued to talk amicably at him like they were old friends. The sophisticated salesman with a double-barreled surname seemed oblivious to the fact that he was currently chatting with one of the wretched creatures that kept his business afloat. The bartender returned with Barric’s martini, and he took a long sip before telling Remus more about his job.

“It’s not a bad gig. I get to see the world and travel on the company’s galleon. And I take home a pretty fat commission, too. But here’s what gets me: Belby specializes in stuff most wizards can’t brew at home, and so he can charge anything he wants. Take Wolfsbane for example.” Another sip. “Do you know how much a one-month supply of Wolfsbane costs out-of-pocket?”

Remus shook his head even though he knew exactly how much it costs, which was more than any salary he ever had.

“250 Galleons! I mean this stuff is basically as close to a cure for lycanthropy as we’re ever going to get, and the people who need it can’t even afford it without going bankrupt. It’s criminal.”

Remus couldn’t agree more with Barric, but to say so out loud might give himself away as one of those unfortunate lycanthropes.

“Anyway, we get away with it because most people will go to desperate lengths to get it. Even if it means living on the streets just so they can get their fix every month,” Barric shook his head. “Feels like I’m selling a part of my soul with every sale I make—hence why you’ll find me at the nearest watering hole at the end of a long day.” He drained the rest of the martini and signaled the bartender for a refill.

“Is it really the only treatment out there?”

Barric leaned in close. “There is actually another one that Belby’s working on. It’s promising and less costly, but highly controversial…”

Remus’s ears perked, eager for Barric to elaborate, but instead the man smiled distractedly at someone over his shoulder.

“Barry, there you are,” a lady’s voice called from behind. Remus turned to see a woman in a sheer, silvery dress and a luxurious fur boa threading the crowd towards them.

“Ah, Vinnie.” Barric and the woman kissed each other on both cheeks. “Darling, I’d like you to meet our new friend, John Howell. He and I went to school together way back when.”

“How nice to meet you, John. I am Grivinia Volkanova,” the woman purred in heavily accented English. She was a tall, feline blonde with her hair pulled back in a sleek bun, accentuating her high cheekbones and sharp violet eyes that lit up when they met his.

“Pleasure’s all mine,” said Remus, feeling his face flush as he shook her hand.

She let out a twinkling laugh. “You English boys, always so polite. What brings you to this fine shithole tonight?”

Remus grinned, liking her already. “I’m just passing through. On holiday.”

“Well, it is wonderful that Barry finds you here,” Grivinia said. “There are not too many of you people in Berlin…from Hogwarts, I mean. I myself went to Koldovstoretz. Are you familiar with it?”

“Definitely heard of it. I’ve never been to Russia before. I’d like to go one day.”

“You should let us take you around Kamchatka. It is beautiful this time of year. Barry and I go every year for our anniversary.”

“Is that where you two met?”

“No. We met in Moscow. Right after fall of Soviet Union. Do you remember, _dorogoi_? Everyone was in the street that night: protester, rioter, partier—magic or muggle—they were all the same the: like wild animals. In the middle of all the chaos was Barry. You can say it was love at first sight.”

“I certainly do remember. But for me, it was more like love at first _bite_ ,” Barric quipped, nuzzling her hair.

Remus raised his brow at the tittering couple. The place was loud and he was pretty drunk, so he wasn’t sure if he had misheard what Barric was saying.

“Does he know?” Grivinia asked eagerly. Barric shook his head. “No, I don’t think he does.”

“Know what?”

“That we are like you.” Before he could ask, she slid off her boa to reveal a circular scar on her right shoulder, just to the side of her collar bone. It looked like it was once a wound from the teeth of a large, ravenous animal—just like the fateful mark Remus received all those years ago from Fenrir Greyback. Except his was on his upper left arm.

“I turned when I was six,” she told him, reading the question from his stunned face.

It was hard to believe that this glamorous witch transformed into the same ferocious monster that he was on full moons. He looked at Barric. “You, too?”

Her handsome companion smiled. “I’d show you my scar, but it’s in a place I don’t normally show in public.” Grivinia giggled and pecked him on the cheek.

“You turned him—on purpose? Why? You could’ve killed him.”

She held her head up high. “Because he asked me to.”

“And believe me when I say that it was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Barry added, slinging a protective arm around Girvinia’s shoulder.

Remus felt his jaw drop. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re both sick. This isn’t a gift—it’s a curse! It’s the reason I no longer have a job, or friends, or family. My whole life has been an absolute, fucking nightmare because of it. For Godssake, you sell Wolfsbane for a living,” he hissed at Barric. “You know how bad it is for people like us!”

He had an urge to spit years’ worth of pent up rage at their beautiful, unscarred faces. “What I don’t understand is how you two have managed to live like international supermodels, while I’m hitting rock bottom in a country where I don’t speak the language, surrounded by poorly-dressed teenagers who spin on their heads and dry hump each other on the dancefloor.”

Without warning, Givinia reached for his hand and held it. “Because no one taught you how embrace who you really are,” she said to him.

“She’s right, you just need to let the right one to show you the way,” said Barric. “Before I met Vinnie, I was lost. I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing with my life. The first full moon after she turned me—God, I never knew such pain, but when I was fully transformed, I felt so…so liberated. Like I suddenly had access to a vast new library of senses I didn’t even know existed. It was incredible.”

Barry and Grivinia went back and forth telling him all the wonderful things they’ve experienced during their transformations, and he began to wonder if they had the same disease. The way they talked about it, it didn’t sound like a disease at all, but a blessing.

“It’s not the full moon that’s killing you, John,” Grivinia said. “It’s the fact that you fight teeth and nails against it. I can see it in your face.” She traced her finger down a long, thin scratch across his jawline. “Do you know how I knew you are werewolf?”

Remus shook his head, hypnotized by her cool touch. “I can sense a werewolf from as far as a mile away. Even when it is not full moon, I still know when one is close by. I picked up your scent a couple of days ago while we were out shopping in Mitte, and we have been following it since, which is how we run into you here tonight. I hope you are not offended. This is just how we find others like us.”

“Others?”

“Yes, we’re building a pack.” Barry put a paternal hand on his shoulder. “And we would like you to join us.”

Remus, of course, knew all about these so-called packs: it was rumored that Fenrir Greyback himself was the leader of one that sought to infect as many people as possible to overrun wizarding society. He pushed Barric’s hand away. “I’d rather die than join any werewolf army.”

“We are not an army; we follow the way of the Lupus Dei. The only thing we want is to help werewolves discover their True Form.”

Remus didn’t think twice about what she meant by ‘True Form,’ because he was stuck on the name. “The Lupus Dei…isn’t that a sex cult?” he stammered. Back in the seventies, the _Daily Prophet_ ran a salacious exposé about the about a commune of wizards and witches who called themselves the Lupus Dei. They worshipped an Australian prophet known as the Wagga Wagga Werewolf and walked around on all fours in the nude.

Barric smirked. “Skeeter wrote that article to create a scandal. There was no real link between the Wagga Wagga commune to the LD. I mean, if you’re into that sort of thing, then power to you. But what we really want is freedom from this cycle of dependence and self-loathing imposed on us by non-werewolves.” He pointed at Remus’s shirt pocket. “I bet you have a flask of Wolfsbane on you right now. Seeing as you don’t have a job, what are you going to do to replenish it next month?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“It is _literally_ my business, John. No one understands the lengths werewolves are willing to go for Wolfsbane better than I do,” Barry said emphatically. “So, what are you going to do: Beg? Steal? Sell your body? For what—a bottle of overpriced potion that you don’t actually need?”

“Now listen here, you—wait, what do you mean I don’t need it?”

“We are saying that Barry and I don’t drink the Wolfsbane during full moon,” said Grivinia. “And we still have clear minds during the transformation. If you let us, we can show you the way.”

Remus took a minute to let this all sink in. He was skeptical, yes, but he had never met werewolves like Barric and Grivinia before. Cult members or not, they clearly possessed something that’s been eluding him all these years. They looked healthy and successful and in love—in other words, they were everything he wasn’t. They might be the key to ending his self-imposed isolation, wrought from the fear of hurting those he loved. He had already lost so many over the years—James, Lily, Sirius, his mother; he didn’t want to spend the rest of his miserable life wandering this earth a lone wolf.

“Well, what do you say, John?”

“’John’ isn’t my real name,” he said. “It’s Remus—Remus Lupin.”

\---

### PRESENT DAY: LONDON, 1995

   
“Barry, you look…different,” Remus Lupin said to the beast towering over him.

That was perhaps the understatement of the century. Barric Johnston-Hughes was no longer the charming salesman he met a year ago in Berlin. His once neatly-trimmed tawny hair was now a thick tawny coat of fur that covered most of his body, and his light hazel eyes now gleamed a golden-yellow as they glared down at him. His elongated snout and oversized teeth made his smile look more like a snarl.

“I see you haven’t changed a bit, old boy.” Barry still spoke with the same chipper, well-bred accent, although it now clashed heavily with his snarling smile. “How did you get in here?”

“I remembered the entry code to our first temporary den.” That time, it involved tapping one’s wand eight times in a circle against a tree—one tap for each phase of the moon. “I think you should consider changing your password.”

Other wolf-people began to emerge the shadows of the den. A hulking red-eyed wolfman with jet black fur growled at him, “You have some serious _colhões_ showing up here uninvited, _mané_. We eat puny deserters like you for breakfast.”

“Now, now, Thiago. No need for hostility. Remus, you remember Thiago Lobo Dias? We picked him up in Lisbon, right before you left. He’s the pack’s new beta—your successor.”

He did remember Thiago. When they met, he had been a large, rather intimidating squib originally from Sao Paulo (or was it Rio de Janeiro?). It was generous of Barry to refer to Lobo Dias as his successor, considering Remus was beta for only a week before he left, a position he assumed only after the Grivinia, the alpha, was…

“’ave you changed your mind, Remy? Ze pack is not ze same without you!” trilled a golden-haired wolfwoman, interrupting his thoughts about Grivinia. The voice belonged to Brigitte Bergeronnes, a French witch used to teach Charms at Beauxbatons before she turned. She and Remus had bonded over how much they missed teaching.

“No, Brigitte. I’m afraid I can’t stay.” She looked at him with sad wolf-eyes, so he added, “It’s not because of you—any of you. It’s because I found another cause that needs me more.”

“But what cause is more important than this?” questioned the perpetually raspy Tsukimi Harimoto, who now had silver-grey fur and obsidian eyes. “Is finding one's True Form not a werewolf’s ultimate destiny?”

“Er—I guess,” said Remus, “But nobody’s finding their True Anything if Lord Voldemort takes over the world.” He waited for a collective flinch to go around the room, but none came. “He’s back, as you may have heard.”

“And you’ve joined the resistance?”

Remus nodded. “I’ve been in it since the beginning. And I’ll be in it until the end—whatever that means.”

Barry turned to the group. “Well, that settles it: Brother Remus has chosen a different pack and we must accept that, even if it’s not what we wanted for him.” He looked back at Lupin. “If I am being honest, perhaps you were wise to leave, because we’re being hunted down.”

“By who?”

“By the very werewolf who turned you. Fenrir Greyback. He and his pack declared allegiance to the Death Eaters. They’ve been tracking us all over Europe. They want the Lunixir Treatment, and we’re the only ones who have it.”

Of course. It was only a matter of time before Greyback or someone in his large following found out about Lunixir—the controversial new formula that Belby was working on as an alternative to Wolfsbane. The treatment put an end to painful transformations every full moon, but it also permanently transformed the drinker into a beastly hybrid of their own wolf and human forms. The Ministry deemed it too risky, and the potion never made it to apothecary shelves. But Barric was able to run off with the only batch ever made, the key to fulfilling his and Grivinia’s dream of attaining what they believed was the True Form: an enlightened werewolf with the intelligence of a human and the full sensory capabilities of a wolf.

“You can’t let them have it. He only wants it for the ability to turn people at any time of the lunar cycle.” Remus said grimly. “That’s sick.”

Brigitte raised a furry brow, “Do you theenk that we are sick, too?”

“No, no. You guys are different. You don’t go around turning people into werewolves against their will. And when I decided to not to take the treatment with the rest of you, you could’ve just killed me right then and there, but you didn’t. Greyback’s crew—they wouldn't be so forgiving.

“Believe me when I say that we have no plans to share the Lunixir with Greyback's pack,” Barric said. “They're not worthy of the True Form. Especially now that they’ve allied themselves with Death Eaters.”

Thiago let out an angry snarl. “I hate those _caralhos_. A group of them ran away to South America after the first war and killed my brother! If I ever see a Death Eater—I don’t care if he is werewolf of human—I’ll rip his throat out with my bare teeth!”

“Need I remind you that killing and maiming except for sustenance is strictly against our ways, Thiago,” Barry told him sternly. “We’re only here for a few more days. The last thing we need are Aurors coming after us for attacking people in the middle of London.”

“What are you doing back here anyway?” Remus asked Barry. “Especially with everything that’s going on right now. People are starting to notice when they see a seven-foot-tall robed figure walking around in broad daylight.”

“We know. We want some people to see us so Greyback will think that the Lupus Dei has established a permanent den in London. Once they think they’ve got us cornered, we’re going to leave the Britain and disappear for good.”

“Where to?”

“Siberia. Where we’ll be safely hidden from human civilization by hundreds of miles of forest and tundra. It’s what Grivinia would want.”

At the mention of Grivinia’s name, all the wolves in the pack began to howl in mournful unison.

Remus’s heart sank into his stomach. “Barry, I’m still so sorry about what happened…”

Barry held up his hand before he could finish. “I don’t want to hear it, Remus. It wasn’t your fault. Grivinia insisted on being the first to drink the Lunixir, but she should have waited to until we were further away from that village. Those pig farmers were quick to shoot at anything that resembles a wolf.”

“I still feel awful. I think about her all the time. You must miss her terribly.”

“More than you’ll ever know,” said Barry stiffly. “But we can’t spend what little time we have on this earth dwelling on what we can’t change. I must keep going to keep her vision her alive as long as I can.”

Remus nodded. He looked around at the pack. Their numbers had grown since he left—it seemed they’d joined forces with another LD pack and all had taken the Lunixir. A small part of him wished he had never left. He had learned a lot from his short time with them—his transformations, while still painful, had become a lot more bearable, even without Wolfsbane. He toyed with the idea of kissing the Order goodbye and joining them in building a peaceful new werewolf society in Siberia. He would finally be a part of a community that accepted him for what he was: Barry, Thiago, Brigitte, Harimoto and all the others, staring at him with their bright eyes, salivating.

“Er, why’s everyone drooling and looking at me?” he asked, suddenly aware of the changed energy in the room.

Barry sighed, “Well, we haven’t eaten in several days, and your enticing scent in our dwelling is starting to trigger our appetite for human flesh. If you don’t leave now, we will have to eat you.

“Oh.”

“Sorry, mate, you know how it is: wolves will be wolves.”

“Believe me, I understand. I’m gonna miss you, Barry. May you find a fresh start in Siberia.”

“I’ll miss you, too, Moony, you wonderful, ravishing man. Good luck with everything. I hope we never see each other again.”

“Likewise,” he smiled.

“But seriously, you have ten seconds to get out of here before we tear you apart limb from limb.”

\---

Remus sprinted down the alleyway, jumping clear over the homeless man who was sleeping on the sidewalk.

“Watch it fella,” the muggle grumbled.

He skidded to a stop in the middle of the street and when he realized Tonks and the car were nowhere to be seen. _Where the bloody hell is she?_

Then he heard the bleat of a horn and turned to see the Astra pulling up next to him. Tonks didn’t even come to a full stop yet before Remus dove in through the open passenger side window. She screamed. Halfway inside the vehicle, he yelled, “Don’t stop. Get us out of here, now!”

Tonks stepped on the gas and the tires screeched against the pavement as she drove them away, his legs still dangling out the passenger side. The muggle tramp watched them speed off, scratching his head.

“Goddammit, Lupin, have you ever heard of a door?” Tonks shrieked as Remus pulled his legs the rest of the way through the window.

“Where’d you go?” He panted as he righted himself in his seat.

“I should be asking you that question! You were taking so long I was driving around the block looking for you. Thought maybe you went out the other side of the alley or something.”

“Sorry. I found the…man…and we had a rather interesting confrontation.”

“Was he a Deathie?”

He shook his head. “They were werewolves.”

“They? There were more of them?”

“About ten. They were a pack.”

“Oh shit. One of Greyback’s?”

“No. Lupus Dei.”

Tonks stopped looking panicked for a moment and furrowed her brow in confusion. “Isn’t that the wolf-fetish cult from the seventies?”

No, not the Wagga Wagga nudist colony, he explained, but a secret society of werewolves seeking to unify their human and wolf selves into one through a complex ritual that involved drinking an experimental potion that the Ministry deemed ‘Unsafe for Human or Werewolf Consumption.’

Her eyes widened. “And you were a part of this…group?”

“Yeah. For a little while,” he said hesitantly. “It was right after I resigned from my teaching post. I was lost. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. So I went abroad for a bit and that’s how I found them. Or rather, that’s how they found me.”

He began telling her about how one year ago, he was wandering through Europe as a rough-and-tumble backpacker named John Howell, when he met Barry and Givinia at a subterranean nightclub in Berlin; he described how they taught him how to cope with the full-moons without Wolfsbane; how he helped Barry break into Belby Remedies headquarters and steal the Lunixir; how they went about collecting more werewolves; how Grivinia, the pack alpha, was shot by a bunch of pig farmers in the Pyrenees; how in her honor they all decided to drink the Lunixir and become the enlightened wolf-beings she wanted them to be; and finally Remus confessed how he chickened out last minute and had been avoiding the pack until today. Meanwhile, Tonks just stared straight ahead at the road and listened.

“If drinking that Lunixir stuff would turn you into a superhuman wolf god, then why didn’t you do it?” she asked, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to ask someone.

He thought for a minute about how to frame his answer. “I joined the pack to find people like me, people who wouldn’t hate me for what I was—what I am. It gave me what I needed at the time, but if I stayed with them…I dunno, I felt like I was giving myself up for a cause that, frankly, I never fully believed in in the first place.”

He felt a pang of guilt. Saying it out loud felt like a betrayal of Grivinia’s memory. To make matters worse, Tonks now probably thought he was a complete wacko for joining a cult, and also too chickenshit to follow through.

He waited nervously while she silently mulled over this new information about the person sitting next to her. Tonks had a pretty high tolerance for people’s weird baggage, but Remus had to figure that his probably took the cake.

“They sound insane,” she began. “But I get why the Lupus Dei would appeal to someone in your situation. I mean, all that culty True Self stuff aside, I can totally see why you would want to be a part of a pack of sexy globe-trotting werewolves.”

“That’s not why I…”

“I know, I was kidding. What I mean is that, it seems like they were pretty cool people to hang out with, at least for a little while. I can see why you liked them. I am sorry to hear about your friend, though, the one who was shot by the pig farmers.”

“Yeah. That was horrible,” he sighed grimly. “Even though she was trying to eat their livestock, she didn’t deserve what happened. She was a good alpha.”

They drove around without talking for a little while, listening to the radio. It was getting late and they were due back at Headquarters before sundown, but Tonks kept passing by all the turns that would get them on the fastest route back to the house. Remus didn’t care. If she wanted to, she could drive him around aimlessly all night long. “Sweet Dreams” came on the radio and he immediately changed the channel.

“You know, you’re the first person I’ve told all of this to. I haven’t even told Sirius,” Remus said after a few minutes.

“I’m honored,” said Tonks. “Really. I’m not being sarcastic. I’m glad you trust me.”

His heart fluttered, as if it just remembered his deep, unexpressed affection for her. He then decided, at the risk of blowing it all, to tell her the other thing that was bothering him.

“For a brief moment back there, I considered dropping everything and going to Siberia with them. I just missed feeling like I belonged to something greater than myself—the way I did during those first few months I was part of the pack. I hadn’t felt that in my life since…since back in the day with Sirius, James, and yeah, Peter, too. Other than those times, I never felt like I had a sense of place or a purpose with other people.”

“What are you talking about, Remus? You have both of those things right now.”

He looked at her quizzically. “With the Order,” she added.

Of course. He felt embarrassed. “Right. Yeah.”

Tonks chewed her lip, as was her habit whenever she was about to say something personal. “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about that, too. Like ‘where do I belong?’ and stuff. And I don’t mean to imply that I know what it’s like to be a werewolf, but my own…unique condition…has always made me stand out as being a bit different. I thought that joining the Aurors would help me find ‘my tribe’ or some bullshit. But it turns out, when most people at the office see you as ‘that creepy shapeshifting chick’ who’s also the cousin of Sirius Black and niece of Bellatrix Lestrange, they aren’t always so quick to accept you as one of their own. So when MadEye and Kingsley first told me about the Order, I didn’t hesitate to sign up. I didn’t even fully know what I was getting into, but something just felt right about it. And I was hooked from the first meeting. I mean, it’s incredible: we’re all different people who would never be in the same room together under ordinary circumstances, but here we are. Kicking Deathie arse together.”

Tonks wasn’t the sentimental type, so to hear her open up about her feelings was a sign that she, too, trusted Remus.

“Anyway, the point of my rambling is that the Order is really where I feel the most at home. And I’m really glad that you’re a part of that home,” Tonks said to conclude her endearingly awkward speech.

“So you don’t think I was an idiot for not taking the Lunixir and assuming my True Form as a Siberian wolf god?” Remus toyed.

“No. I like you just the way you are,” she said, so firmly that Remus stared at her. She blushed. “And everyone else in the Order does, too,” she added hastily.

Hearing her say those words put him on cloud nine. He wanted to reach out and touch her hand that was currently resting on the gearshift, but he refrained when he looked up and saw that her face was clouded over with a slightly worried look.

“Why were you running around back there like someone lit a fire under your arse?”

“Oh. I had to run out of there because if I didn't, they were going to eat me.”

“What?!”

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing. They warned me—that’s way more than an ordinary werewolf would give a potential human prey. Anyway, I got out in time. It’s not like they’re going to track me down or anything.”

“I’m not trying to be judgmental, but that’s so messed up.”

“I thought you liked me just the way I was…that’s how werewolves are,” he blurted.

Her face became stony for a moment and Remus’s heart sank; he blew it. Then she turned to him and said, “You’re more than just a werewolf, Remus Lupin. And the sooner you start believing that, the better chances we have of surviving these shit times together.”

He sank back in his seat and stared blankly out the windshield. She was absolutely right. While he was too busy moping over being too old and too dangerous, this now pink-haired witch had driven him around and saved his arse, and somewhere along the way took over the wheel of his tired, aching heart as well.

“Ravishing,” he said quietly, half to himself.

Tonks cocked her brow at him. “Excuse me?”

“Before I left, Barry told me that I was ‘ravishing,’” he began to laugh—a few snorts at first, then deep, belly-aching laughs. “I don’t think I've ever heard anyone call me that in my entire life.”

To his relief, she was grinning again. “Are you absolutely positive that they weren't a sex cult?”

He shook his head, still chuckling. “At this point, I can neither confirm nor deny it...”

They were both in happier spirits as they cruised their way through the borough, the sun beginning to dip behind the tops of the buildings. Tonks drove them the long way back to Grimmauld Place, taking every possible side street on the way, in no rush to return to the place they’d both come to call home. She barreled down a narrow street with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm, as an oncoming car laid on its horn and angrily drove around them. They caught each other’s eye and laughed it off.

“Earlier on, you were trying to tell me something,” Tonks asked him. “What was it?”

“Oh, that. Er, well, I was just trying to tell you that I…”

He was interrupted by another car honking at them. Tonks flipped the bird at the driver. “God, people are so rude today,” she muttered. “Sorry, you were saying?”

He took a deep breath. “Ok. Dora. I’m no good at this sort of thing, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I wanted you to know that over these past few months I’ve been feeling like we—and of course I don’t expect you to respond in any sort of way—but I…”

“For chrissake, Moony. Spit it out,” Tonks teased, a small smile forming on her lips. “You just told me about your freaky cult experience. There isn’t much you can say now that will surprise me.”

“Alright, alright. What I’ve been trying to say to you this whole time is that…YOU’RE BLOODY DRIVING THE WRONG WAY!”

A lorry was now blaring its horn as it hurtled toward them from the opposite direction of what they now realized was a one-way street. The next few seconds slowed to dramatic crawl: Tonks yelled _OH SHIT_ and slammed her foot on the brakes, steering hard to the left. She managed to avoid the lorry but jumped the curb, toppling over a post box before ramming into a fire hydrant. The airbags deployed and they both lurched face-first into the tough cushions; Remus felt his front teeth sink into his lower lip.

Water beat down on the hood as they sat in shocked silence. Thankfully, there were no pedestrians around, but there was a metallic taste in his mouth and the blood rushing in his ears dampened all sound, including Tonks’s nervous babble.

“Oh my God. I am so, so sorry. That truck came out of nowhere. Bugger these one-way streets! Remus, are you OK?”

Her heart-shaped face was white as a sheet as she scanned him with her dark eyes, trying to assess the damage.

“Merlin, you’re bleeding!” she shrieked, examining the small cut on his lower lip. “I’m taking you to St. Mungo’s. We’ll apparate. To hell with these metal deathtraps! My mother was right all along!”

He had never seen Tonks fret like this before. It was rather touching to see the usually sharp-tongued witch in combat boots suddenly doe-eyed with concern. Despite the split in his lip, he felt the sudden urge to laugh.

She began shaking him by the shoulders, trying to get him to talk. “Goddammit, Lupin, say something!”

Remus took hold of both her hands to stop her from shaking him, and when he finally said the words, he did so without a hitch.

“Tonks, I think I’m in love with you.”


End file.
